Exercise

Most people who think about yoga often associate it with women. For some men, the idea of going to yoga class is right up there with going to see the latest chick flick! Should this be the case? Does yoga have benefits for guys?

There is no doubt that yoga is a full body workout (but not in the sense that most guys think). No, it’s not all about sitting, meditating, chanting, or talking about feelings! Studies do show that yoga can certainly build strength, increase flexibility, and improve balance, stability, sleep, and relaxation.read more

Do you feel like you’re stuck in a rut when it comes to your workout routine? Looking to get back to the days when your exercise program was challenging, causing a good kind of muscle soreness over the next few days? Yes, I have said that even a boring workout is better than no workout at all. But boring is not very likely to lead to significant improvements either.

I’ve written previous blog posts stressing the need to modify workout programs on a regular basis in order to see optimal results. Sure, adopting and sticking with a new exercise routine can be tough. That’s why I’ve come up with 11 great tips to inject new life into a boring workout routine and provide the motivation you need to do more than just get to the gym:read more

So you’re hitting the gym on a regular basis and drinking your protein shakes, but you’re just not getting stronger. You just may have hit the dreaded fitness plateau! But don’t worry–there are options for you to stop feeling stagnant and move forward in your fitness quest. Wanna know how? Vary your workouts!

When you start lifting dumbbells for the first time you may begin to see results fairly quickly. But as you continue to gain strength in a specific movement, the body requires new stimulus to grow. According to research studies, the body will adapt to a typical fitness routine anywhere after one to six weeks. While there is no one specific reason why you may stop seeing progress in your strength gains, a very simple (but plausible) solution may be to change things up.read more

There are many different types of runners out there. Whether they are recreational runners or competitive runners, their thoughts are similar–that exercise is medicine and running is therapy. The benefits of running far outweigh the risks in terms of improving our overall health, especially for our heart, lungs, bones, muscles, and brain. Running can help to reduce stress, lower cholesterol levels, aid in weight loss, boost the immune system, and improve your mood. So what’s the issue, since millions of people worldwide exercise by running?read more

One of the most effective exercises you can do is a simple squat. It engages the entire lower half of the body, including the hips, glutes, quads, hamstrings, and calves, while also hitting the shoulders, back, and core. Performing a correct squat takes a lot of muscular coordination throughout the whole body, which serves to build muscle and burn fat simultaneously thanks to its high metabolic demand (which simply means it burns a lot of calories because it works a lot of muscles). Does it really matter how far down you go?read more

Using your mobile devices can help to make fitness fun and interesting, but can they also alter your behavior by increasing your physical activity? According to a research study in the Journal Of Medical Internet Research, the answer is “yes.” We all hear people blaming technology for making us lazy, arguing that we spend way more time on our phones, tablets, or computers than we do being physically active. However, mobile health and fitness technology are helping to change that opinion with the introduction and growth of the app market and online communities. Since we now have portable tools at our disposal 24/7 that can help us track our health and fitness information, we should start to see mobile devices as an opportunity to improve our health rather than as a burden to our health.read more

In my last blog post I went over the differences between high-impact and low-impact exercises. I provided some obvious examples of both types of exercises. For low-impact I cited such things as swimming, yoga, and the elliptical machine. But how about some more obvious and quite a few not-so-obvious examples…

1. Walking–So let’s start out with our most obvious example first! Walking is a stress-free way to get moving. If taking a leisurely stroll is not challenging enough, there are a number of ways to increase intensity–simply walk up and down hills! If hills are not to your liking, try walking with dumbbells in your hands or ankle weights around your lower legs to really get that heart rate elevated.read more

We all know that eating the wrong kinds of food can be unhealthy, but what about the wrong kind of exercise? While there is no “gold standard” for determining if an exercise is high-impact or low-impact, knowing the difference between the two can make a tremendous difference in using them correctly to strengthen your body.

Mention the words high impact and it immediately brings to mind a head-on car crash–or, in the event of the body, football players colliding head-on. But high-impact exercise also encompasses athletic events that have much less person-to-person contact, such as the jolting and jarring motions involved in running. Every time your foot hits the ground when you run you’re putting 2.5x your body weight through your lower extremities. While there are some research studies out there that suggest that the right amount of high-impact exercise can increase bone density (since we know that bones respond to a certain amount of stress in order to get stronger), other studies have indicated that too much impact can place excessive strain on the body and may even wear down bones, muscles, and joints over time, potentially leading to severe degenerative changes down the road.read more